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With the growing awareness of energy conservation, environmental protection and green travel around the world, electrification has become a new direction for more and more multinational car companies, but in the face of this trend, doubts about the development of electric vehicles still exist, including the PSA Group from Europe.

"Electric cars are not attractive to mainstream consumers and only 'environmentalists' will choose to buy them," Carlos Tavares, chief executive of PSA, said on a conference call during the Geneva auto show. "when some markets remove some subsidies, demand for electric cars collapses," he said. " Obviously, in Tang Weishi's view, the current electric car still does not have any advantages, nor can it become the mainstream model.

Tang Weishi said that the main reason is that the current electric models lack of intensive charging network, short mileage, and the uncertainty of the long-term trend of electricity prices, which will hinder the development of electric vehicles.

Tang Weishi also revealed that at present, PSA Group has difficulties in selling electric cars to mainstream consumers, and most of its electric models are bought by "environmentalists" and have not become a choice for mainstream consumers.

For this reason, the PSA Group may consider developing an integrated platform that can meet both fuel, hybrid and pure electric models. In this way, they can easily launch models in line with mainstream consumption in the face of different market needs.

Therefore, PSA has not decided to invest as much money as Volkswagen and GM to develop new pure electric vehicle platforms, not only because PSA Group does not look at the current development of electric vehicles, but also because of the current global market malaise, cost-cutting has become the main measure of most models. In the view of PSA Group, the research and development of every model under their control should bring ideal revenue.

Although it is not optimistic about the current trend of electric vehicles, PSA Group has also made the layout of electrification transformation. According to its future strategic plan, starting from 2019, each new model of the PSA Group will have its corresponding pure electric or plug-in hybrid version. The group had previously announced that all its models would be fully electrified by 2025. At the same time, 2020 will also be the first year of the group's electrification strategy in China, and five new energy vehicles will be listed and sold in China.

For this decision of PSA Group, some industry insiders think that there are advantages and disadvantages, and the use of integrated platform can indeed achieve cost maximization, but with the successive emission reduction policies issued by countries around the world, pure electric vehicles will become mainstream models sooner or later. What's more, the European region, which is in the mainstream market of PSA Group, has accelerated its automobile emission reduction policy in recent years, which means that the integrated platform is only a short-term emergency before the policy comes.

Of course, it is not only PSA Group that questions the current pure electric models, but also Honda, BMW and other car companies. Honda CEO Baxiang Takahiro said in a previous interview that electric vehicles will not become mainstream in a short period of time, and to reduce carbon emissions does not have to promote pure electric, Honda will still focus on hybrid systems. Frolichi, R & D director of BMW Group, also announced in front of the media that "pure electric cars have only policy demand, no market demand" and "fuel vehicles have at least 30 years to survive." however, these companies are also gradually promoting electrification strategy.

According to the survey, the trend of electric vehicles slowed slightly in 2019, with annual sales of 2.209 million vehicles, with an annual growth rate of 9.5%, compared with 64.5% in 2018 compared with 2017. This is mainly due to the rapid growth of Tesla in 2019 and the decline of new energy in the Chinese market.

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